The Crossway
by Catslynw
Summary: One-shot. Post The Great Game. John is dead, Sherlock is falling apart and Mycroft will do anything to fix it all. Crossover with Supernatural, so be warned! Mycroft/Anthea, Sherlock/John friendship


_Author's note: This is set just after The Great Game in Sherlock BBC and sometime post Season 5 in Supernatural. This is the first and only crossover I've ever written, so I hope you enjoy it. I've explained enough, hopefully, that the non-Supernatural fans will be able to understand what is happening. Let me know what you think, and remember that reviews are love! Catslyn._

The Crossway

Moriarty had taken John. Sherlock had insisted this was the case in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Had insisted it again and again. John was _alive_ because Moriarty had taken him. It was the only explanation for their inability to find him at the pool. It was the only explanation that Sherlock would accept. It was why Sherlock had gone haring off after the madman the moment he was released from the hospital whilst blatantly disregarding the advice of his doctors, the pleadings of his landlady, the protestations from his friends at Scotland Yard and the awful, chilling silence from his brother. But his brother, Mycroft knew the truth. Sherlock would never find John with Moriarty because all that was left of the good doctor to find was buried beneath the rubble of the Haverstock Public Pool.

Mycroft had tried to discuss the matter rationally with Sherlock before his younger sibling had taken off in pursuit of a criminal lunatic. He'd tried logic where the emotional appeals of everyone else had failed. Logic had always been the best and most effective tool for controlling Sherlock's behavior in the past. This time, however, it failed utterly. Sherlock simply would not hear him… _could_ not hear him, it seemed. The fact that Mycroft's people had intercepted the security feed from the pool while the police were en route made no impact on Sherlock whatsoever. The fact that the feed showed John standing beside the building's exterior wall, showed a burst of static and then showed – albeit grainily and canted because of the intervening explosion – the wall, the ceiling and much of the floors above it collapsed on the spot where the good doctor had been standing had been dismissed by Sherlock as circumstantial evidence. John might have moved during the brief period when the video went dark. Since he would never have left Sherlock or the others in doubt as to his safety and well being, the only logical conclusion, according to Sherlock, was that Moriarty had once more abducted the doctor and fled with him tucked metaphorically under his arm.

The whole thing made Mycroft's head hurt. Worse, it made his heart hurt. For years, Mycroft had waited patiently for his brother to come out of his self-imposed shell, to open himself up to feeling more than curiosity and a burning drive to prove himself useful to the world. Neither of these were bad things, but without some form of real human connection, they were dead, barren, ultimately pointless. Others might think Mycroft cold, but anyone with the wit to look past his very British sang-froid knew better. He was a man who felt things very deeply, and so he kept himself under tight control. He knew that, deep down, his brother was the same. A difficult childhood spent in public boarding school had, however, left Sherlock with scars that no plastic surgery could ever remove. He didn't fit. He didn't belong. He didn't _understand_ how to fit and, eventually, he stopped _trying_ to belong. Alone by choice was less painful than alone by alienation, and so Sherlock chose to set himself forever apart. Genius without heart… it was no way to live.

The key to changing that had been finding someone who could bring out the good in his younger brother, who could reach the lost little boy who only wanted to be understood, who still wanted a playmate to share the sense of wonder that the world's mysteries evoked in him. Finding such a person had been a trial beyond measure. It required locating someone of reasonable intelligence but very little ego, a person with a strong moral code he would not break but who had the sense to know when to bend it a little, a person who was fearless and stout-hearted but not lacking in common sense, a person who was loyal, honest and generally reliable. Worse, this person had to be all of these things and yet also be wounded enough to bring out Sherlock's deeply hidden, but also deeply felt, protective instincts. In other words, Mycroft had been looking for a bloody saint.

The miracle was that he'd found one. He'd known the moment he met John Watson that the little doctor was the companion his brother so desperately needed.

The tragedy was that he'd now lost him. _Sherlock_ had lost him because Dr. John H. Watson was dead, buried beneath several tons of concrete, brick, wood and wallboard.

The challenge was finding a way to bring him back.

Mycroft walked the circle, double-checking every square millimeter of it for mistakes, breaks, or the slightest of imperfections. Satisfied that there were none, he stepped into the circle and walked to the small, incongruous stone building at its centre, the one that stood squarely over the top of a gravel crossroads, its large carriage doors permitting access in each of the of four cardinal directions. The Holmes family, though not of the aristocracy, was an old family, a _very_ old family, even by British standards, with a long history. Much of that history had been written down by ancestors who'd been convinced that the world would one day hang upon their every word and action, that their position as members of the gentry, hobnobbing with the nobility, would lead to an inevitable advancement in status and position. Mycroft supposed it had. He was, after all, what he was… "the British government" as Sherlock not-so-jokingly called him. One did not need to have the trappings of power, such as titles, to have real power. He doubted his ancestors, most of them so very puffed up, would have agreed. The family library here at Fingal was full of diaries, journals and ledgers, most of them mundane in the extreme: books of records on everything from how many sheep had been slaughtered to feast a visiting dignitary in 1683 to how much had been collected in rents the year the Magna Carta was signed. Disgustingly boring and utterly useless, the majority of it. A few, however, made for more interesting reading, and one of those had explained the purpose of the building in which Mycroft now stood. The shelter, which the diary of one Hrodebert Holmes called simply The Crossway, had been erected during the time of The Great Rebellion. The Holmes family had been on the wrong side of that one, and yet somehow it had survived with all its lands and revenues intact. Mycroft suspected that he now knew how.

Using the information in Hrodebert's diary, he had carefully restored The Crossway some years previously, just in case he every needed it. He'd even had the garden replanted with the flowers stipulated in Hrodebert's plans, to the great despair of his gardener. Some of them were _weeds_. Then he'd closed the building up and forgotten about it. Until now. Until two days ago when Sherlock had returned, panicked and heartbroken from his search for Moriarty. The damnable thing was that baby brother had found his madman, badly wounded and hiding out in Vienna. He had not, however, found John for obvious reasons. Sherlock had been forced, at last, to admit that John had to be somewhere under all that rubble. He'd shattered before Mycroft's eyes as he accepted the truth. Simply shattered, and Mycroft had known instantly what he had to do. Sherlock had remained in London, hovering outside the Haverstock Public Pool, reduced to the oh-so-plebian pastime of watching and waiting for word from the rescue workers. Though anyone of any sense knew that John could not possibly have survived the initial collapse – let alone the five intervening days trapped under all that debris – the authorities weren't quite ready to officially give him up for dead. Mycroft's influence _might_ have had something to do with that.

Mycroft had left his brother to the tender care of his landlady, Mrs. Hudson, and headed straight for Fingal, his personal assistant, "Anthea," at his side. Anthea had helped him make all the final preparations, though not without reservations.

"Are you certain you want to go through with this, sir?" Anthea asked once more. It was the third time she'd asked in the last hour, extraordinary behavior for a woman who never repeated herself and rarely spoke when she could text.

"Quite certain, Anthea," he assured her as he took a seat behind the large, old partner's desk he'd had moved into The Crossway just that morning by his puzzled but attentive staff. "There is no other option."

"If you fail, the consequences…" She trailed off uncertainly.

"If you wish to back out – " he began, brows narrowing in surprise, but she cut him off with haste.

"Certainly not. I'm not worried for myself, only for you. This is a very dangerous business."

"An unseemly one, as well," he agreed, "but necessary, nevertheless." Mycroft sighed as he glanced about the interior of The Crossway, his eyes lingering for a moment on the laptop sitting so anachronistically on a small table near the centre of the space. His gaze drifted next to the equally anachronistic metal lockbox on the gravel between the table and a shallow hole in the ground. Anthea seemed to be waiting for him to say more, and she, if anyone, deserved an explanation for this madness they were about to undertake. "If Dr. Watson dies, then my brother will also be lost to me. Sherlock has only just begun to know his true self after all these long years. He has the most delightful conceit, you see, that he is a sociopath and therefore has no feelings. It's almost endearing really, this childlike belief that if he denies having feelings, they won't be able to hurt him." Mycroft smiled sadly. "It is, of course, completely untrue. He can feel and he will suffer unbearably if Dr. Watson dies. I fear he would not survive the loss, not under these circumstances."

"But Dr. Watson is dead, sir."

"Only if he remains so, Anthea. Only if he remains so." He took her hand and patted it affectionately. "Now, let us begin." He smiled reassuringly at her, and Anthea offered up a faint smile of her own, a dimple appearing and disappearing on her cheek.

Anthea nodded and left The Crossway. Mycroft checked his watch and when it showed five minutes to midnight precisely, he placed the lockbox in the hole and covered it over using his bare hands. A dirty business, this, he thought as he wiped at his fingers with one of the monogrammed, silk handkerchiefs that Mummy had given him on the occasion of his fortieth birthday, just the previous year. He was just retaking his seat behind the desk when a familiar and yet unfamiliar voice spoke from the centre of The Crossway.

"Mycroft Holmes, you darling boy, finally decided to give me a proper ring, I see."

Mycroft swiveled in his chair to find "Anthea" standing behind him, having reentered The Crossway from the south. Her eyes, normally so brilliant, glistened a bloody red save for the solid, unrelieved black at their centres. "Ah, Ms. Pendle, do come in. We have business to discuss."

The demon froze for a moment in the process of circling him, eyeing him suspiciously. Then, trailing one hand along the edge of the wood, she moved around to take the chair on the other side of the ancient partner's desk, lowering herself into it languidly. "So you know my name, goody for you."

"I make it my business to know the name of anyone with whom I have… dealings," Mycroft said nonchalantly.

"So, what can I do for you Holmsie, dear?"

"You don't know?"

The demon – the late and unlamented Sarah Pendle – hummed for a moment, still trailing her fingers listlessly along the trimmed edge of the desk. "I have my suspicions, but I can't be certain. I thought surely we'd get you in that last election, but you never did call. My colleagues and I were terribly disappointed."

Mycroft huffed dismissively. "As if I would sell my soul for anything so transitory as political gain. There are far easier ways to control the masses… and with far better retirement plans."

"True," she agreed with a grin, making that oh so very distracting dimple appear in Anthea's cheek. "So, at a guess, I'd say this is something to do with your wee brother."

"Very good. I wish to purchase the soul of one Dr. John H. Watson. I wish it returned to his living, healthy body."

"Well, that's simple enough. The usual terms, then?" She nodded to herself without waiting for his response. "Good. Now, if you'll just – "

"I'm afraid not, my dear Ms. Pendle."

The demon sat forward in the chair, all signs of lassitude abruptly gone. "Excuse me, but you don't get to dictate terms, Holmsie. That's not how it works. If you want John Watson alive and well, you hand over your own soul in trade. You say, 'Thank you very much,' for the ten years of grace we give you before we come to collect, and you _don't_ argue."

"Is that how it normally works? I am sorry," Mycroft drawled, "but I fear you have misunderstood my offer."

"Your offer?"  
Mycroft inclined his head toward the laptop sitting on the table at the centre of The Crossway. "If you would be so good as to tap the space bar." Glaring darkly, the demon sauntered over and jabbed at the keyboard. The screen, previously in sleep mode, came to life with the image a Skype window. Within the window, one could see an old brick and mortar fireplace, its firebox filled with a brittle collection of old bones atop a pile of kindling. There was a man's arm just visible in the edge of the video transmission, a Zippo lighter held fast in his fingers.

"What the bloody hell?" the demon demanded, spinning back to face him. "Are you insane?"

"Hardly," Mycroft said, tenting his hands on the desk. "You see, Ms. Pendle, I am not offering my soul. I am offering a far more simple trade: your bones for Dr. Watson, alive and well."

"How do you know who I am? How did you find my bones? How do you even know what will happen to me if you burn them?"

Mycroft wave a hand at her. "Irrelevant. Normally, I would never be so rude as to ignore your perfectly reasonable questions, but I'm currently operating under something of a time constraint. The only thing that matters now is whether you are willing to make the trade."

"I could kill you now, before anyone could stop me," she hissed, her fist coming down on the laptop and crushing it, sending a shower of plastic bits to the gravel road below.

"You could, however, you would not long outlive me. This entire building is constructed inside a giant Key of Solomon. If I die, my retainers will burn your bones and that will be the end of us both. If you refuse my perfectly reasonable request, my retainers will, once again burn your bones, and I shall make my offer to the next crossroads demon to answer my summons. Eventually, one of you will say yes. Your death will hardly inconvenience me."

"It will inconvenience your pretty P.A. She'll die too. In agony."

"Losing my personal assistant, while tragic, is would be an acceptable loss," Mycroft said, though not without a shade of regret. He kept his features blank, his posture relaxed. Anthea was not an acceptable loss, but if it came to that, if it came to her or Sherlock – well, Anthea already knew and accepted his choice. Still, better the demon should not see his concern.

"You are a cold British bastard, aren't you. Somehow, I doubt that little Anthea would agree that her life was an acceptable loss."

"She already did, Ms. Pendle. Why do you think she was so handily nearby and dressed in the signature crossroads black? We were certain you wouldn't pass up so suitable a candidate for possession. We none of us want civilians involved in this… delicate matter."

The demon gaped at him before stomping over and dropping into the chair like a sack of potatoes. "It's like dealing with a sodding Winchester," she snarled. "You disappoint me, Holmsie."

"Oh, I am sorry," he said with mock sincerity. "Now, are you going to be reasonable about this, or are things going to be… " he examined his manicured fingers critically, "unpleasant?"

The demon sighed dramatically. "Fine. Fine. Whatever."

"Excellent." For the next ten minutes, Mycroft proceeded to lay out The Deal in precise terms. John was to be found in the rubble, alive and healthy barring some artistically appropriate bruising. Dehydration was acceptable, as anything else would be remarked upon by the rescue workers, but it should not be serious. There were to be no reprisals of any kind again Mycroft, Anthea, Sherlock, or Dr. Watson. Anthea was to be left behind, whole and intact when the demon departed. The demon was not permitted to discuss this agreement or any part of it with anyone save Mycroft, including humans, demons and other sentient creatures mortal or immortal. Her bones, save one, would be returned to her exactly one week following Dr. Watson's discovery by the rescue workers. They would be delivered, to a location of her choice, by private courier. Her skull would remain in the possession of Mycroft's estate until such time as all human parties to The Deal were deceased. At that time, it would be returned to her as well by the estate solicitors.

"Is that acceptable to you, Ms. Pendle?" Mycroft asked politely.

"Well, it will have to be. Won't it?"

Mycroft smiled broadly, uninterested in hiding his pleasure in yet another bargain well negotiated. "Yes. It will."

"Done then," the demon snapped. She rose to her feet, kicked her chair aside, and yanked Mycroft out of his seat. "You know what comes next, you limey bastard?"

He did. Wrinkling his nose in distaste, Mycroft leaned forward across the desk and placed a rapid, chaste kiss on the demon's lips. He had only just begun to pull away when his mobile phone rang. "Excuse me," he said, reflexively polite. "Yes?"

The voice on the other end of the connection was excited and breathless, more breathless than he'd ever heard it before. "Mycroft!" Sherlock yelled, his voice hardly distorted at all by the scores of miles separating them. "Mycroft, they've found John! He's alive! Do you hear me? I told you he was – "

"Oh, that is good news, my dear boy, but I'm afraid I'm in the midst of a rather crucial meeting just now. You see to John and I'll check in with you later." So saying, Mycroft ended the call.

"Satisfied?" the demon demanded.

"Very. Your bones will be delivered in precisely one week." Mycroft pushed the speed dial on his mobile, a pre-arranged signal with one of his gardeners, a particularly loyal and unflappable individual. At receipt of the signal, the gardener would break one of the lines of the Solomon's Key. "You may go now, Ms. Pendle. Our business is concluded."

The demon, a very uncouth person despite her extreme age, flipped two fingers at him and departed in a cloud of inky smoke. Mycroft rushed forward as Anthea's legs collapsed beneath her and she fell to the gravel. He caught her by the shoulders and held her against him until her entirely human hazel eyes opened and some hint of sense returned to them.

"Did it work?" Anthea asked the moment she could speak.

Laughing, Mycroft deposited a much warmer kiss on her lips than he'd favored the demon with. "Perfectly," he informed her.

Anthea sighed. "Brilliant."

Mycroft helped her to her feet and wrapped an arm around her trembling shoulders. "And now we have an appointment at the house with my personal tattooist."

Anthea frowned in dismay. "Is that really necessary? It seems so vulgar."

Mycroft laughed again, feeling the relief of success going to his head. "I assure you, my dear, it is the safest course. After all, I have one myself," he said, referring to the tattoo that protected him against the very form of possession through which his assistant had just suffered.

"Oh, very well," Anthea agreed reluctantly.

"Now, please ring Mr. Singer for me. I'm sure he's anxious to know how everything went."

Anthea pulled her cell out of her pocket and dialed while they walked toward the house. After a moment, she handed the phone to Mycroft.

"Robert?" Mycroft said tentatively. By the sound of the reply, Singer was in an uncharacteristically good mood, so Mycroft relaxed and filled him rapidly in on the details of the night's work. "Yes. Yes, swimmingly. No problems at all. The Campbell journals? Already sent, dear boy. You should have them any day. Anthea will text you the tracking numbers. Yes, yes. Thank you again for your help, most invaluable."


End file.
